CFL - What's possible...

m3d1c1n3man

Well-Known Member
I'm making this thread to show a CFL grow, what's possible with a CFL grow, and so forth...

Here is a plant ( one plant ) grown with CFL, currently under 230 watts of 2700K split between 4 bulbs.

She is sitting in a closet about 2' x 3'.

It is 10 weeks into the 12/12 and just before harvest...

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Notice the strings holding up the fat, heavy buds that are leaning over.

Close up of the buds...

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Some good looking trichs and swollen calyxes.

( There was a problem about a week earlier, when almost all of the big fan leaves turned yellow, then brown and dried out, which you can see some of the remnants of on the buds. The dry, dead leaves were cut off with scissors. It may have been caused by some lemon juice that was mixed in with the water to try and lower the ph. Similar thing happened when some vinegar was mixed in with the water of a different plant to lower the ph. The results were catastrophic with all the fan leaves dying in a couple days! )

Time to harvest...

Chopped off all the good buds, trimmed her some, and now she is ready to re-veg!

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Lots of good leaves and a lot of "node" sites where new shoots can grow from. Tried to make a flat landscape so the plant grows evenly.

The lights...

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Immediately switched the light to 20/4 and put in 4 23w 5000K CFL bulbs. ( Adding 2 more lights would be ideal. )

It will take about a week before any serious new growth starts to show.

If a shoot gets too unruly, it will be trimmed so the plant grows flatly.

She is grown in soil, and given organic fertilizer.

...

Chopped off all the buds, hung them and dried them, then trimmed them and cured them, and this is the result...

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2 oz. of fine, home-grown bud! :leaf:

Some close ups of the bud...

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Picture quality is not great... but you can see the trichs shining in the light.

So the lesson here is...

Growing with CFL works! :lol:
 

vostok

Well-Known Member
I really can't imagine how pleased you will be, the day you acquire a set of 400w HPS lights, you will be orgasmic ....lol as there is a gradual declining rate of use the more you use CFL's, to many thats obvious?
 

drolove

Well-Known Member
could of bought HID with all the money you spend on CFLs. although i admit that you did good with CFLs, imagine what you could of done with HID
you know they say once you go HID you never go back ;)
 

BSD0621

Well-Known Member
I really can't imagine how pleased you will be, the day you acquire a set of 400w HPS lights, you will be orgasmic ....lol as there is a gradual declining rate of use the more you use CFL's, to many thats obvious?
same goes with HPS... This back and forth will continue for another decade... waiting for the day the LED and HID fags go at it. will be interesting
 

SunnyJim

Well-Known Member
I really can't imagine how pleased you will be, the day you acquire a set of 400w HPS lights, you will be orgasmic ....lol as there is a gradual declining rate of use the more you use CFL's, to many thats obvious?
Pointless statement is pointless.
 

m3d1c1n3man

Well-Known Member
Nice grow man! I'm growing 4 girls under cfl's and t-55's. My first real grow. How is the quality?
Thanks! Never heard of t-55's, what's that all about? The quality is damn good as expected. As good as all (or most) of the street hydro i used to buy back in the day for a crazy $100 or more per 7 grams!
 

m3d1c1n3man

Well-Known Member
could of bought HID with all the money you spend on CFLs. although i admit that you did good with CFLs, imagine what you could of done with HID
you know they say once you go HID you never go back ;)
I only spent about $30 on the four big bulbs, plus about $30 on the fixtures, chains, etc. So that's $60. I believe an HPS would cost $150 or more?

..that's not really the problem, i don't really have access to go out and buy an HID right now. I am considering ordering one by mail, but i don't know if that would be smart...
 

BSD0621

Well-Known Member
Well regardless of your future investments I say IMPROVE with with you got... can't hurt. Besides, you will notice CFL's give a better quality of bud over quantity (hid's) that is, unless you go out and add some supplemental lighting.
 

BSD0621

Well-Known Member
My advise, is look into Scrogging and LST.. You could create an even canopy thus giving you more yield
 

wdk420

Well-Known Member
I have only used CFLS, not that I can't afford an HPS. I have noticed that some of my CFL grown bud is at times more dense then HID grown by a friend. High heat, high bills, and the cost of replacing bulbs just made sense for my needs as I'm not a commercial grower.
 

yesum

Well-Known Member
You are doing well. The bulbs hanging down below the reflectors are loosing light. If you extend with some aluminum foil or thin metal, the edges of the reflector to cover to the end of the bulbs, you will get a lot more light out of your rig.

Cfl bulbs shoot light out of the end of the bulb and out the sides in a 360. All the side light that does not have a reflector to channel it down is lost. You could hang the bulbs vertically around the plant with a reflector on the back side of them.
 

m3d1c1n3man

Well-Known Member
How did your revegetation go? How many days did it take to get its vigor back and start new growth, if at all?
It takes about a week for any new growth to show. Then, it will start to come back pretty strong in the following days. The key is to leave a lot of good vegetation and a lot of little shoot heads.

To give an idea, the plant in this thread in the previous grow it was the original "christmas tree" from seed that was about 5 feet tall. After harvesting it and revegging, there was a total of only 35 days in the revegging light cycle. It grew super thick with small spaces between the leaf nodes, and a ton of leaves, almost too thick in some places. It was a serious bush, looked like a hedge outside of someone's house. But not real tall.

So it revegged as good or better than the original veg I would say.

Yes, revegging really is a viable way to grow a plant. I'm not sure why I don't hear about it more often.

Perks include...
- Only need one grow chamber
- Do not have to guess sex of new plants
- Can continue same healthy plant and quality bud
- Plant revegges faster than a new plant grows from seed
- Easy to maintain; don't have to handle many pots, cuttings, seeds, etc.
- No waiting for cloned cuttings to take root
- Plant grows bushier when revegged
- Train it once to fill a space, then it maintains that shape indefinitely
- Train it and veg it into a beast over several cycles

I know the commonly accepted "best method" is to have a mother and take clones every cycle, but I'm not sure if that method is necessarily better than the revegging one.

And short of having a mother, it is definitely better to reveg a harvested plant than to start a new one from seed!
 
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